The IRS wants YOU — to share everything

Some tea party members worried they’d be punished for followers' Facebook comments. | Reuters

“They were asking for the names of the donors, which is exactly the opposite of what we were looking for because if people knew their names would be made public or known to the government, they stop giving,” said Nordvig.

“Why do you even need that? There’s no reason your tax status should depend on your donors,” Littleton said.

Text Size

-

+

reset

Toby Marie Walker, the president of the Waco Tea Party, says her group applied for 501(c)(4) status in July 2010 and didn’t get a response from the IRS until February 2012 — when it sent a letter with 20 questions, including requests for printouts of its Web page and social networking sites.

It also wanted copies of all newsletters, bulletins and fliers, as well as any stories written about the group.

“They were killing trees right and left,” Walker said.

The IRS also asked for transcripts of radio shows where her group had mentioned political candidates by name — a job she figured would have cost her group $25,000. And it asked whether her group had “a close relationship” with any candidates or parties, a question she considered especially vague.

Walker said her group eventually got the questions knocked back a bit, with the help of the American Center for Law and Justice — and the IRS agreed to drop items like the Web page and Facebook printouts.

In January, Walker said, the Waco Tea Party submitted its final responses to the IRS — and in March, it won its tax-exempt status. By that point, she didn’t really feel like celebrating.

“It was a win, but I didn’t feel like it was a win, because it took us 18 months,” Walker said.

Chris Littleton, one of the co-founders of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, said the group got a grilling from the IRS when it submitted its application, in letters the group has posted on its website. The IRS also gave him so much grief when he tried to apply for tax-exempt status for another group, American Junto, that “we just gave up on it,” he said.

But when he submitted an application for a third group — Ohioans for Health Care Freedom, now renamed Ohio Rising — “it went through just fine,” Littleton said. “They never asked a single set of questions.”

Julie Hodges of the Mississippi Tea Party said the group has less than $800 in its account and relied on volunteer lawyers to deal with the IRS. It withdrew its application for 501(c)(4) status in early 2012, citing the delays and questions.

“The government is harassing us over a political position,” Hodges said.

The Greater Phoenix Tea Party Patriots applied in January 2010, and two years later, received an inquiry from the IRS with 35 questions.

“I do recall our co-founder called the IRS and the agent on the phone pretended he had our case file open in front him,” said the group’s president, Chris Rossiter. “Then she asked him a question, and he said, ‘What’s your group’s name again?’”

Several said that because the tea party groups constantly spoke to each other, it was easy to see they were all getting the same questions from IRS.

“It was a mistake for the IRS to take on the tea party because what we do is organize, so we’re going to figure out we were getting the same letters,” Rossiter said.